


Stutter

by run_sure_footed



Series: Mod Froglets [3]
Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: Ableism, Bullying, Froglets being monsters to each other, Happy Ending, Mistrust, Mockery, Stuttering, Violence, but it's not graphic I just didn't want it to sneak up on anyone, childhood stutter, culturally acceptable violence between Froglets, fight, interrupted attempt to forcibly undress another Froglet, so I DID tag this for violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28458054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/run_sure_footed/pseuds/run_sure_footed
Summary: This is one of my favourite fics from the Mod Froglets series, and it's also one of our first Kwat-centred fics!Again, as before, Froglets have letter names until they're older, so Kwat is K, Jamack is J and Harris is H.
Series: Mod Froglets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061339
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Stutter

Most of their classes were not a problem for K.

For all that she was twice the size of the other Froglets, she was still agile. She could fight with the best of them, she was good with a mace. She could hop and swim and scavenge, ride dragonflies and make basic repairs to clothing and cars. Most of the instructors didn’t require—or even particularly want—Froglets to talk. Sometimes they were even punished for speaking out.

But the final class of the day was Events—both current and past. They had to answer questions. They had to present information to the other Froglets. They had to speak, eloquently, and debate each other. And K could not do that.

The debate had gone terribly. Her opponent had managed not to mock her for the stutter throughout their argument—there were rules when it came to debates—but K could see the faces of the rest of the Froglets, hear the quiet laughter.

She clenched her fists. Her stutter worsened when she was upset. Usually it was only a small hitch every once in awhile, something she tried to avoid through careful word choice, but when there was this much pressure, her entire Year watching and laughing, their instructor clearly displeased, she could hardly force out a sentence. She had known going in that she could never win this debate, but now it seemed like she wasn’t even going to _finish_ it.

Her sentences became fragments, single stuttering words, and then unbreakable silences. She was trying, desperately, to force something out, but it was only getting worse.

She stopped. It wasn’t going to happen.

K listened to the rest of her opponent’s points in silence. She had the knowledge to refute her. She could have disproven every word the other Froglet uttered, if only she could get her thoughts to come out.

The debate ended with a terse noise from their instructor when it was her turn to say her final words and she merely shook her head.

Their class was dismissed after a few parting instructions, and the Froglets filed out onto the lily pads, in the small secluded part of the Pond where the Froglets lived and studied. K wished—as she had many times before—that she was smaller, easier to overlook. There was no way for her to avoid the cruelty she was sure was coming.

K was too big a target to take down alone, but the Froglets were trained to fight much larger opponents as a group. While most of them filed out, some ahead of K, some behind, a few stayed back to block their instructor from seeing what they were about to do.

Once the group was a safe distance from the classroom building and no instructors would overhear—or, if they did, they would be too far away to care—L called out, “Hey, K.”

When K turned to look at her, tensed, L nodded.

In unison, just the way they’d practiced in class and discussed privately, U, P, D, and A leaped at K, each grabbing a limb and riding her down to the ground.

L jumped on her middle, crouching on top of her with an arm across her throat. “You’re so big and s-s-s-stupid,” she mimicked K’s stutter with a laugh. “Everyone knows you’re gonna turn into a Mega. You’re probably already growing extra arms right now, aren’t you?” She grinned at D, who was holding K’s right arm. “Wanna find out?” Damaging another Froglet’s uniform was forbidden, of course, but adults tended to overlook the rules if they were broken carefully, cleverly, or brutally enough.

With L on top of her, K didn’t even have a good angle to strike any of them with her tongue, her head forced back. Her frantic struggles weren’t enough to cause any real damage or remove any of her attackers long enough to escape or fight back. She didn’t respond, knowing the words would just come out fragmented and cause more mockery.

There was a pop as one of her jacket buttons came off.

*

Back inside, J had gotten into an argument with their instructor over the demerits he’d gotten for turning his debate into a very personal attack on his opponent—ending in tears.

H noticed that there were still other Froglets lingering suspiciously in the doorway, smirking. He’d been the victim of their attention often enough to get suspicious. Keeping a careful eye on them, he stepped closer to J and waited for him to take a breath. “Uh, J?”

J paused, following H’s gaze. He suddenly saw the signs that H saw. He dismissed himself from their instructor as quickly as he could without being disrespectful. The two of them together got the Froglets blocking the door out of the way, with a few sharp words and elbows. Once they got outside, they noticed a commotion on one of the smaller lily pads behind the building. They exchanged glances. They had both been the recipients of L and her pack’s ‘attention’ before.

H frowned at J, who was practically vibrating with indignation. “It’s not our fight,” he pointed out, already knowing he’d join in if J did. And he was pretty sure J would.

“It is now.” It wasn’t a fair fight, so they were going to even the odds, at least a little. L especially—sitting on top of the prone K—was a vicious bully and J and her had fought plenty before. The opportunity to do it again, with H at his back and maybe even the help of K, was enticing.

K had managed to kick off A, bruising him, but D had already popped two of the buttons off her jacket.

H bounded over to the pile of Froglets, his long legs propelling him farther with each jump than J’s could. He should have waited until he had J to back him up, but he got there a few seconds sooner. He saw K’s torn clothes and felt something snap inside him. “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted, hooking P’s leg with his tongue. He wasn’t strong enough to pull him away, but he could at least knock him off balance and release K’s leg. Hopefully that would give her enough of an edge to help him and J, rather than just lying there while they did all the fighting.

H freed his tongue and stepped back, assessing the situation. He grinned at J when he hopped over. “Took you long enough.”

“Long legs,” J shot back, elbowing D right between his eyes, which smacked him into J’s knee, hitting his lower jaw hard. J heard the click of his teeth being forced together and D went down with a whimper, clutching his face.

With her arm and legs free, K threw off U, grabbing L’s wrist and twisting it back. A was already back in the fight, but with K now on her feet, it didn’t take her long to knock U into the water, thump A up against the wall with her full weight, causing a loud croak of pain. She pulled L over her shoulder in a throw, smacking her down hard onto the lily pad. Luckily for L it was a forgiving surface, or she might have broken something.

Not realizing K had stood up behind him, H laughed as all five of the bullies splashed into the water and swam away. “Yeah! You don’t fuck with us!” he shouted after them. He turned to grin at J. He shot a nervous look at K looking up—and _up_ —at her. H was a little taller than the other Froglets, but K was _huge_. She was standing a little close for comfort, but he just stared her down and didn’t back away. He also pretended he didn’t see her torn uniform.

J was grinning too when he saw K’s attackers all retreating. He turned back to K, his triumphant grin turning into a friendly smile. She didn’t look hurt, at least, though he was willing to bet she was sore from L hopping onto her chest like that. He bent and picked up the two buttons that had rolled across the lily pads, offering them to her. “Let’s go to the dining hall,” he suggested. It would be quiet in there now. Froglets were allowed to eat meals at any time once classes were over, but most Froglets wouldn’t eat dinner for another couple hours, seeing as it was still afternoon.

K took the buttons, her expression unreadable. She nodded. Though she knew H and J, had known them all their lives, K only knew them as well as she knew every Froglet in their Year. Meaning she knew their strengths and weaknesses, mostly; more intimate details about other Froglets had seemed useless to her.

H suspected that J would make friends with anyone, if they let him. Luckily, most didn’t. He gave K an assessing look. Somehow he didn’t think she’d allow herself to be outnumbered so easily again.

The three of them went to the dining hall, J chatting animatedly with both of them, arguing with H in between stories. K said nothing the entire evening, only nodding or shaking her head occasionally, but she stayed with the two of them until they all went to the dormitories to sleep.

The next week was very similar. Whenever the Froglets had free time, K gravitated to J and H. She spent most of the day with them. She said nothing, not a word to them, and J was starting to realize that she _never_ said a word to anyone unless they were a fully fledged Mod Frog who could punish her for not answering.

“She’s really weird,” H complained to J during what seemed like their increasingly rare moments alone together. “She’s not good for our status, and we’re already…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, and he knew he didn’t need to. J knew how low their status was, even without K. “Good in a fight, though,” he admitted grudgingly. He suspected it was already too late—after all, he couldn’t get J to leave _him_ alone, either—but he knew he’d better try while he had any chance of getting rid of the loser before she became a permanent part of their group. Which already consisted of two losers.

“She’s still getting to know us,” J said. “And I really don’t think our status can get any lower. And with three of us together, we’re all less likely to be picked off. Our chances get _better_ , H, we want her to stay.” J could admit that she was a little weird, but so was H, and so was he. They just had to get used to each other.

H sighed. He hadn’t expected he’d win this argument—not that he ever won arguments with J, not really. The best he could do was accept it with dignity before he got mad and started shouting and made a scene and got punished for it. “Fine. She can stay.”

“I know,” J teased. “I already said that.”

“Ugh, shut _up_!” H groaned, lightly punching J in the side.

J just laughed. H had limits as far as teasing went, but J liked to find out exactly where they were. A gentle punch was usually a sign that taking it a step further would result in much more painful retaliation. He didn’t mind the first strike, though. It was almost affectionate.

*

It was another three weeks before their friendship with K changed. J was talking about the class they had just finished, the way he often did, running over everything that had happened. He seemed to almost think aloud sometimes, but it often proved useful, drawing new ideas from H and solidifying J’s conclusions. He was listing the most common slip-ups on the obstacle course.

K expected that H would jump in when J missed an obvious one, but she quickly realized that H didn’t recognize that part of the obstacle course as difficult. She’d been watching J and H more closely lately, obviously, and H was a particularly good climber, even on wet surfaces. She piped up before she could think too hard about speaking in front of them. “You m-m—” She took a breath, knowing from experience that backing up a word could help. “You missed the c-climb over the fountain. The cement is a-always wet.” She couldn’t raise her eyes from the table. She didn’t want to see their expressions.

J paused, thinking. “You’re right. I didn’t slip this time around. It slows most of the class down.”

H laughed. “Yeah, it slows the _suckers_ down.” He caught himself grinning at K like they were sharing a joke at J’s expense before he realized it and looked down.

K, even to her surprise, grinned back. Even if she was technically also a sucker, according to H, seeing as she couldn’t cling to wet concrete, but it was such a relief to have him talk to her easily, the way he talked to J, to hear J agree with her. She had been quiet for so long, and now she could _talk_ to someone, two someones, without the fear and pressure that usually came with it.

J snorted. “You’re the sucker, you’ve got suction cups for hands.”

“Oh, what’s that, J? I hear they picked your name! It’s _Jealous_.” H was very pleased with himself for having come up with that. Now he grinned at both of them openly. Maybe K wasn’t so bad.

K laughed.

J swatted him, about to verbally defend himself, before stopping to admit, “Actually, I’m impressed, that was a good come-back.”

They got back into the conversation, this time with K’s voice joining theirs.

*

**Author's Note:**

> happy New Years! thanks for reading <3


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